Looking at the Numbers -- Dickeson

I suggest that you check this for your company. Just divide your sales by materials. In this group of 785 companies, the average printer had materials equal to 36 percent of sales.

However, average EBITDA for a printer in the lower 587 firms shows us just a breakeven. The top 198 have almost 15 percent EBITDA. The difference between the two groups is to be found in the operating expenses. The average top printer spent 14 cents less of every sales dollar to operate its plants than did the average firm in the lower group. This is really a shocker! That's an awful lot of money. Average sales for the top group were reported to be $13.3 million for the year. The lower group averaged roughly equal average sales. So the average profit leader had operating expenses of $1.86 million a year less than the average of 587 reporting printers. Yikes!